


Lunch Interrupted

by Silberias



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Robert and Joffrey are jerks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 18:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6918439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silberias/pseuds/Silberias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gilly had to call out unexpectedly from her shift at Jon's restaurant--and the only person that Sam and Edd can think to call is Sansa, even though she's never worked a day in food service of any kind. Sansa might have lucked out for working on a slow Thursday but instead the head-honchos of Baratheon Lumber are having a corporate luncheon. </p><p>Just shenanigans, pure silliness and fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lunch Interrupted

The manager at Jon's restaurant called her in a massive fuss--Sam's  voice sounded the slightest bit squeaky, which she knew from hearing Jon and Arya's stories meant he was on the verge of panic. Aliser, their maitre'd, had called out--probably in a tiff over Jon daring to take vacation time during spring break to be with his wife and daughter--and their best waiter Pyp had broken his elbow the previous evening when he slipped and fell.

Gilly, the girl that Sam was not-so-secretly in love with, had had to take her son to urgent care for a high fever and Sam had called Sansa to help with the lunch service.

She was taken a bit aback--she was studying history and fashion at university, the most experience she had with food service was helping her mother with setting the table for the solstice feasts. The last time she'd burned out all the water from a tea kettle her sister had forbidden her to try to cook anything in the apartment they shared, and Jon had long ago convinced her she was not abandoning him by not working in his restaurant. Even her mother, who hated that Jon had spent the money he inherited from Grandpa Rickard on opening a restaurant--Lyanna's--had worked a few shifts at the wine bar.

But Sam seemed so desperate that Sansa agreed. She came straight from class, wearing her cute sandals, leggings, and crop top. Sam's whole body sank in relief when he opened up the kitchen door at her knock, his fat face immediately jolly as he ushered her in.

"You'll have to put your hair back, and um--well we can't do much about the shoes. Are--are they nonslip?"

"Um--"

"It's fine, it's fine--um, okay, uh, yes. I'll get an apron for you, and uh, an order book. Now, lunch starts in half an hour and, and the special is--" and he launched into a disjointed explanation of how orders were taken, what the special was, what they were out of, how to handle allergies, and that when customers paid she was to track down Edd and have him help her. It washed over her like a tidal wave and Sansa struggled to keep up. Thank the warrior that she was still in school and was used to absorbing lectures.

Edd was a man in his forties, narrow faced and dour, but he was one of Jon's best friends. Sansa was a little terrified of him to be honest, but everyone always told her his bark was worse than his bite--and that it was the usual maitre'd, Aliser, that was truly horrible.

"We don't take Bank of Norvos or Bank of Qarth, just don't. You get a lot of types coming in to gawk at the king's bastard son, and they'll try and say they've paid with it before. We don't take those cards. GardenEx we take, Kings Coin we take, Arryn Card we take. No personal checks, and if a Targaryen isn't on the money we don't take that either."

"GardenEx, Kings Coin, Arryn Card," Sansa repeated dutifully as Edd showed her where the menus were kept and how they wrote down the waiting list.

The apron itched terribly and she was super uncomfortable because Sam had given her one of his to conceal the crop top she was wearing. Her hair pulled and hurt because they'd had to use a rubber band to pull it back, no one had any hair bands to spare. But she was excited, and it wouldn't be that hard--Thursdays were rarely very busy, and were usually lots of tables of singles according to Sam and Edd. The only table where they had to really worry about anything was a big table that had been booked for a corporate luncheon in the back room.

Sam assured her that he would be the one handling the corporate lunch, that as long as she handled some of the tables in the front he could get the rest.

At first everything went swimmingly. Despite her awkwardly tied hair and the oversized apron wrapped nearly double around her and her shoes that left her a bit wobby because of the material of the soles she felt like she had a good grasp of things. Edd tallied the orders out before she returned the checks to the table, and he said he would split half the tips with her if things went well. Sansa was just starting to daydream of what she would spend a bit of unexpected pocket change on when the corporate lunchers started arriving.

"Well this is a new low," a disgustingly familiar voice drawled. Sansa's skin crawled as she skipped up to Edd to do the math on her latest check. Joffrey stood in an impeccably fit suit, his blonde hair trimmed close to his head and a little dragon pin on his lapel. Ever a contrary little patriot, and especially tasteless considering the owner of this establishment. His presence though explained everything of who was having a business meeting today.

Storm Lumber--the titan of the lumber industry and her father's only true competition. She'd heard from Jon that Mr. Baratheon liked to play at being a father figure to him, lamenting often that Lyanna had left them all too soon, etc, etc. He could get quite maudlin, apparently.

"Dropped out to look for your cousin's half-siblings, I suppose," Joffrey said, and he would have said more but just then his father barrelled in with both of his brothers.

"Joff, my boy, did you--Sansa! Taking a turn in the family restaurant, I see, glad to see you," Robert stuck his hand out and gave hers a hearty shake that nearly wrenched her arm off. She could see Edd turning an upset shade of puce and tried to extricate herself but it was not to be.

"You'll be our server, right? We don't see each other enough, and you can catch up with Joff while we wait for those fuck's from--"

"Robert," one of the brothers, Stannis, cautioned in a low voice.

"Staaaaan," Robert fired back in a mocking tone. Stannis sighed and shrugged off his suit jacket and folded it over his arm, and Sansa had to keep herself from staring at him. If Joff's suit was impeccably tailored he certainly looked like he was wearing a sloppy off-the-rack number compared to his uncle. Every inch of the shirt was filled out perfectly, not a thread was loose, not a single inch sagged or tugged where it shouldn't.

The fashion designer in her was scrabbling to ask him where he'd gotten it tailored. The woman in her was struggling not to drool.

"Well Sansa is--"

" _Dolorous Edd_ ," Robert intoned to his son, digging a joking elbow into Joffrey's side and drawing a vicious little smile from the young man.

"Sansa will do fine," Renly chimed in, "she might distract them from the egregious amount of money we're charging them for the export. Pity the Norvoshi never bothered with replanting their forests, if they had done that a hundred years ago they wouldn't be in this crisis for building materials."

It was terrifying and she was too upset to even talk for a moment. The last thing she wanted was to even be here while Joff was here, let alone take his order and smile and be pleasant while his father tried to teach him the family business. Edd was past puce and on towards squashed raspberry, and as she grabbed the menus for the table he hissed at her "no fucking bank of Norvos, their cards make our system flip out and Jon will murder me if Sam doesn't come at me with a cleaver first. Last time someone tried to run one of those cards the reader wouldn't work right for a fucking week." Sansa nodded along in a daze, trying to juggle the dozen rolls of silverware while keeping her grip on the menus while also not slipping on the floor.

Why hadn't Sam told her to wear sneakers?

She managed to get everything set and even remembered, bizarrely, that Stannis liked a slice of lemon with his water. He had his glasses on as he reviewed a file that Renly had handed him and there was a flicker of genuine surprise when she set the little teacup of sliced lemons next to his water carafe. Sansa smiled brightly at the soft 'thank you' he uttered before Edd called her back out front to clarify one of her orders before she was absorbed completely by the lumbermen's meeting.

For the most part she did okay.

She told everyone at the meeting--some relaxed and languid businessmen from Norvos, some other executives and assistants from Baratheon Lumber--that she was filling in and apologized for any mistakes she made. Sansa avoided spilling anyone's food or water all over their laps, and she even avoided triggering Renly's spinach allergy by smoothly saying that the appetizer of spinach dip and herbed bread was sold out for the week. Everyone was pleasant and understanding and really they were having a meeting more than a lunch.

It was all wonderful to the point where she should have known it would come crashing down.

First Joffrey started making some off-color comments and then translating them in poorly articulated and thickly accented Norvoshi--and then she had a complete Robb moment and ran Joffrey's Bank of Norvos card at the register before Edd could stop her and Renly had to pay in cash which she knew was a huge no-no with the accountant at Storm Lumber--and then to top it all off, one of the Norvoshi men had slapped his hand on her ass and given her butt a hard squeeze.

Sansa yelped, Robert and his brothers stood up shouting, and then Sansa cracked her palm right across the face of the man who had grabbed her. The tableaux had been utterly silent for a long moment and then Sansa was stepping back, barely keeping her balance, and taking off the apron that Sam had loaned her.

Robert and Renly were suddenly saying all kinds of placating things to their business contacts while Joffrey stared lecherously at her midriff as it was exposed and Sansa burst into tears--walking stiffly out of the restaurant while trying to pull the rubber band from her hair without feeling like her scalp was being peeled off her skull. The quick, stiff walk turned into a run for a few blocks until she found a place to sit and have her cry.

When a hand descended on the top of her head she thought it was maybe Edd, for he'd been surprisingly kind to her despite her major fuck-up of ruining the card system for the next week, but when she looked up it was Stannis in his perfectly tailored business shirt. He was breathing a bit heavily but otherwise seemed as unruffled as he ever was.

"If you hadn't of done that I would have," he murmured, folding himself down to sit next to her, awkwardly putting his arm around her shoulders. The motion was welcome for the most part but her head was screaming at her on account of the pulled hairs from earlier--she'd elected to leave the rubber band alone until Arya was able to cut it out.

"Why--why do men do that?"

Stannis sucked in a breath and seemed to mull over his answer for a good while. She hoped he wasn't about to say something infuriating like 'not all men' because if he did she was going to punch him in the nose. Unlike a lot of women she was actually tall enough to do it, and he was an easy target sitting right next to her.

"They were never taught not to, I think. Robert went to an all boy's school all the way through university, up in the Vale, and no one ever taught him differently than he is. I was raised by my adoptive grandfather who never put up with such nonsense from any of us. The waiter--Edd?" she nodded, "he was in the middle of throwing everyone out when I left."

Sansa felt terrible, for her freak-out had ruined what had seemed to be a fairly productive business meeting. She told Stannis as much, her voice muddled and hoarse from her tears. There may have been a few childish sniffles in there too. Her palm hurt still from how hard she'd slapped the man who groped her.

"Mm, our clients after a while start to pick up some of Robert's...attitudes and behavior and it will do all of us some good to be reminded of professional behavior. Renly's ugly little plot to have you distract them didn't work," Sansa sagged, defeated that she hadn't even been eye candy enough, just her bottom, but Stannis gave her shoulders a bracing squeeze.

"I know you didn't mean to turn heads, that that was something Robert and Renly thought to use you for without your permission, but you didn't do anything wrong to provoke that sort of behavior. Not from them, not from Joffrey, not from those men we were meeting with. You showed yourself to be kind and professional and a woman with clearly defined and firm boundaries."

Was that a hint of admiration in his voice? Sansa tried to mull it over, taking steady breaths and reveling in the scent of his cologne and the warmth of his arm, but she stayed quiet. Eventually Stannis cleared his throat and started speaking again.

"I am not usually so forward as anyone else in my family, but could I take you to lunch? It--it would be meant to be romantic in nature."

Sansa giggled, wiping at her eyes with the back of one hand so as not to smudge her makeup too badly. Stannis went utterly still as she did so and Sansa used the moment to help herself to his lap--for once a man was proportioned well enough that she didn't feel like some sort of bizarre Northern stork. She couldn't help herself and hesitantly stroked the back of his head, weaving her fingers in his hair before bringing her hand back down to her own lap. He was completely and utterly hot--she was going to design a line of menswear if only to see him wear it.

"I'm not laughing at you, I promise. So--a date?"

He flushed, just his cheeks and ears, and Sansa scrutinized his face as he seemed to struggle for words now.

"I--uhm, yes, I--"

Finally she put him out of his misery and just leaned in for a feather light kiss.

"A date would be wonderful."


End file.
